ROBERT REICH: Get Ready For A Passionless Presidential Race

Robert
Reich is one of the nation’s leading experts on work
and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy
at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of
California at Berkeley. He has served in three national
administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under
President Bill Clinton.

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Polls show Americans angrier and more polarized than at any time
since the Vietnam War. That’s not surprising. We have the worst
economy since the Great Recession and the worst politics in
living memory. The rise of the regressive right over the last
three decades has finally spurred a progressive reaction.
Occupiers and others have had enough.

Yet paradoxically the presidential race that officially begins a
few months from now is likely to be as passionless as they
come.

President Obama will be supported by progressives and the
Democratic base, but without enthusiasm. His notorious caves to
Republicans and Wall Street — failing to put conditions on the
Street’s bailout (such as demanding the Street help stranded home
owners), or to resurrect Glass-Steagall, or include a public
option in health care, or assert his constitutional
responsibility to raise the debt limit, or protect Medicare
and Social Security, or push for cap-and-trade, or close
Guantanamo, or, in general, confront the regressive Republican
nay-sayers and do-nothings with toughness rather than begin
negotiations by giving them much of what they want — are not the
stuff that stirs a passionate following.

Mitt Romney will surely be the Republican
presidential candidate — and Romney inspires as little enthusiasm
among Republicans as Obama does among Democrats. The GOP will
support Romney because, frankly, he’s the only major Republican
primary candidate who does not appear to the broader public to be
nuts.

But Republicans don’t like Romney. His glib, self-serving,
say-whatever-it-takes-to-win-the primaries approach strikes
almost everyone as contrived and cynical. Moreover, Romney is the
establishment personified — a pump-and-dump takeover financier,
for crying out loud — at the very time the GOP (and much of the
rest of the country) are becoming more anti-establishment by the
day.

At this point neither the Republican right nor the mainstream
media wants to admit the yawn-inducing truth that Mitt will be
the GOP’s candidate. The right doesn’t want to admit it because
it will be seen as a repudiation of the Tea Party. The media
doesn’t want to because they’d prefer to sell newspapers and
attract eyeballs.

The media are keeping the story of Rick Perry’s cringe-inducing
implosion going for the same reason they’re keeping the story of
Herman Cain’s equally painful decline going — because the public
is forever fascinated by the gruesome sight of dying candidacies.
With Bachmann, Perry, and Cain gone or disintegrating, the right
wing-nuts of the GOP have only one hope left: Newt Gingrich. His star will rise briefly
before he, too, is pilloried for the bizarre things he’s uttered
in the past and for his equally bizarre private life. His fall
will be equally sudden (although I don’t think Gingrich is
capable of embarrassment).

And so we’ll be left with two presidential candidates who don’t
inspire — at the very time in American history when Americans
crave inspiration.

Instead of a big debate about the basics (how to truly restore
jobs and wages, financial capitalism versus product capitalism,
the place and role of America in the world, how to rescue our
democracy), we’re likely to have a superficial debate over
symbols (the budget deficit, the size of government, whether we
need a “businessman” at the helm).

This means political passions are likely to move elsewhere —
finding their voices in grass-roots movements, social media,
demonstrations, boycotts, and meet-ups — on the Main Streets and
in the backwaters, and only episodically in the mainstream media
or in normal election-year events.

In some ways this may not be such a bad thing. The regressive
right has had thirty years to build itself into a political
power. Newly-energized progressives (Occupiers and others) need
enough time to develop concrete proposals and strategies. What’s
the rush? If polls are to be believed, most of the nation is
progressive, not regressive (witness last Tuesday’s results in
Wisconsin and elsewhere). So it is, after all, only a matter of
time.

Yet viewed another way, a passionless presidential race may be
dangerous for America. The nation’s problems may not wait. They
require bold action, and soon.